


And You?

by bettycoopergal



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, F/M, New Year's Eve, Post-breakup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 02:05:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13308099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bettycoopergal/pseuds/bettycoopergal
Summary: It’s been five years since they graduated Riverdale High and even longer since Betty and Jughead broke up. When they reunite at a New Year’s party, will they get closure, or something else entirely?





	And You?

“10 more minutes!” someone yells from a room over. Drunken shouts of excitement echo throughout the house, and Betty Cooper lets out a sigh. She is quite literally backed into a corner, silently counting down the last seconds of the year as she tries to ignore the anxiety that is threatening to close in on her. Her back is pressed into the sharp dip where the walls meet between the kitchen and the hallway, and bodies are blocking her view into both. She can only see directly in front of her, a fact that seems suspiciously like some kind of metaphor.

She’s in Archie and Veronica’s new house in Riverdale for their annual New Year’s Eve party. Betty has kept in contact with Veronica over the five years that have passed since they all graduated high school, and by extension she’s kept in contact with Archie, but not really anyone else. Because of that, her yearly visits to Riverdale over the holidays have been mostly limited to family time, with the occasional meet-up between her and the now-engaged duo. But this year Veronica finally talked her into coming to one of her famous New Year’s parties, much to Betty’s chagrin. “You just have to see the new house, B!” she’d said, at last guilting her pushover best friend into agreement.

So far, Betty’s been able to manage her social anxiety pretty well, even with all the forced small talk she’s had to make over the past few hours. But she won’t go so far as to say that she’s enjoyed the experience. There are just too many memories in this town for her, too many unwanted feelings that bubble up in the pit of her stomach. Every familiar face seems to bring her right back to high school, and that’s the last place she wants to be.

After all, it’s been a long time since Betty left Riverdale—a long time since she’s seen a lot of the people surrounding her now. Since graduating, she’s completed a journalism degree at NYU, accepted an editorial position at one of the smaller publication offices in New York, and moved into her very own run-down studio apartment. But even though all of these things seemed like major accomplishments to Betty just hours ago, now, as she is faced with the ghosts of her memories, they feel somehow hollow.

She’s spent a good part of the last five years trying to grapple with her past, to accept the way that everything turned out for her. By the time Betty was walking across the stage at Riverdale High’s graduation, everything had fallen apart. People were dead, murdered by the darkness of the town that everyone had thought was innocent. Her family was broken, her dad having left behind the shell of her mom not long after Polly moved to have the twins. Her friendships were strained, unable to bear the weight of the impossible obstacles that had fallen upon them at such a young age. And her relationship—with the boy who she would have given anything to be with—had never recovered from its seemingly temporary break. “Until it sticks,” she can still hear sometimes when it’s quiet. Even now, years later, she can’t believe it actually did.

Betty and Jughead tried for a while after that horrible day to return to some semblance of the friendship they’d had before they became more than that, but it never worked. The love they’d shared—it was irrevocable, and there was no use pretending it wasn’t.

In the aftermath of the breakup, Jughead fell into a leadership role with the Serpents while Betty drowned herself in her studies. Every conversation between them was clipped, every glance cut short by an awkward tension. In time, the core four shattered under the pressure of the Riverdale civil war and the pain of lost love. Betty’s world was upended.

She isn’t proud of the person she became after that. She moved through life in a mist, like she couldn’t see two feet in front of her. Her sleep was riddled with nightmares, and she dug her nails into her palms so often that she wore permanent bandages. She had never felt so utterly alone.

But when she graduated and moved into the dorm at NYU, Betty was determined to make a change. She wanted to write the next chapter of her story—one where she was healthy and happy and living a normal life. So she started going to therapy, starting learning how to cope with her anxiety and depression. She rediscovered herself and began to move beyond the guilt and shame she’d carried on her shoulders in those last years at Riverdale High. She built a totally new life for herself—one where she completely left her past behind.

But now, as she stares through the space between Trev Brown’s shoulder and Ethel Muggs’ head, that past that Betty had worked so hard to escape hits her at full force in the form of a tall, handsome figure. There, in her direct line of vision, stands Jughead Jones. He hasn’t seen her yet; he’s engaged in an animated conversation with someone she can’t quite make out. But Betty can tell by his brightened eyes and his relaxed demeanor that he’s at least a little inebriated.

She doesn’t know why she’s surprised. She hasn’t seen him in years, after all. But Jughead was never the one to get drunk at parties when they were in high school—he was always the guy in the corner of the room sipping the same bottle of beer all night. Has he really changed that much since high school?

Well, Betty certainly has.

She tries to come up with a way to dodge him and make an escape, but she’s too late. Jughead‘s gaze is locked on her face. He hesitates, ignoring the conversation he was just having in favor of whatever battle is now brewing in his mind. But he seems to decide something, pushing his way through the bodies with a hint of a smile on his lips.

“Betty Cooper,” he says when he’s finally standing in front of her.

She doesn’t respond, mainly because her brain stopped working two seconds ago when he started to walk over to her. Her silence doesn’t seem to faze Jughead, though. He pulls her into a side hug that turns extremely awkward because Betty can’t seem to get her body to move. She is stiff in his arms. He pulls back, and she can still read the flicker of hurt in his eyes like no time has passed between them at all.

But his expression changes quickly into something more light, and suddenly the alcohol has him talking more freely than Betty has ever remembered him doing.

“I’ve heard all about you taking the Big Apple by storm! How do you like it?” he asks, bending down to listen to her response.

“It’s good,” she says evenly. She knows she could be more forthcoming with him, but she just can’t bring herself to be normal.

He seems to realize her hesitation and takes it in stride, changing the subject. “You’ll never guess what I’m doing these days,” he says.

“What?” Betty manages to mumble at her shoes, avoiding eye contact.

“I’m applying for doctoral programs. Y’know, in English? I wanna do collegiate research. And maybe publish a book!” She can see in her peripheral vision that he waves his arms around excitedly as he talks, and Betty wants to cry at the carefree tone of his voice. “Bet you never would’ve guessed that, huh Betts?”

She swallows, biting back the cocktail of anxiety and sadness swirling in her stomach. “I would have,” she says, glancing up at him. “I always knew you would do something great.” It comes out as a whisper, and a serious expression passes across Jughead’s face. There’s a long pause, and Betty looks back down at her shoes.

“I thought about calling you.” He says it so quietly that Betty almost misses it. She doesn’t know if he means during the application process or some other undefined time, but she doesn’t say anything. As usual, he reads her like a book and answers the question as if she’s asked it out loud.

“Over the summer,” he says.

She nods, not sure how to respond.

“And last Christmas,” he adds. He’s crinkling the empty red solo cup in his hand as he talks, and Betty shifts her gaze onto the curve of his fingers. “I had the stomach bug, and I thought about how you used to close your eyes and plug your ears whenever people would throw up around you.” He chuckles fondly.

“And a couple of years ago, in the spring, when I signed up to play intramural soccer for some idiotic reason and failed miserably. I could hear you making fun of me in my head.” Now he outright laughs at the memory, and Betty can’t help but smile with him.

“And right after graduation...” he says, suddenly sober. Betty looks up to find his eyes fixed on hers, their intensity almost too much for her to bear. She feels a familiar stab in her chest, the reopening of a wound long scabbed-over. His face is so soft, his eyes so earnest. She somehow doesn’t want to hear what he has to say but also craves it. Her life was dark then, and she carried around the heart that he had shattered for longer than she’d like to admit. Being here with him now and listening to his voice again makes her think that maybe she never stopped carrying it. “...when I quit the Serpents for good.”

Betty feels the air leave her lungs, and all she can do is stare at the boy in front of her. She thinks this moment must be her chance at closure, but she doesn’t know why it feels so much like hope.

“And today,” Jughead says in a whisper. He glances from her eyes down to her lips and back up again, and Betty can’t breathe. “For no reason at all, except for that I’ve regretted breaking up with you every damn day of my life since then, and I miss you so much that I don’t even know if I can be whole without you.”

Somewhere in the next room, the countdown to the new year hits zero. The hallway fills with confetti, and people are yelling and embracing. The house booms with noise, but Betty can’t hear a thing. She can only focus on Jughead, on what he just said.

“Do you still...” she whispers, not really sure how to finish the question without her heart beating out of her chest.

“Yes,” he responds immediately. “I always have, and I always will.”

Betty can feel herself begin to shake. Jughead takes a step closer to her, leaving hardly any space between them.

“And you?” he asks, his face just inches from hers.

She takes in a shuddering breath. “Of course,” she whispers. “I never stopped.”

Before she can even register what’s happening, Jughead’s hands are in her hair and his lips are on hers. She presses her body into his, completely electrified by his touch and desperate for every bit of it she can get. It feels like the most right thing she can ever imagine—it feels like she’s finally whole.

And thus, at 12:01 on New Year’s Day, Betty Cooper’s world finally turns right again. At last, she is home.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little angsty one-shot I finally wrote after a long period of writer’s block. Something about the NYE trope for Betty and Jughead post-breakup just really resonated with me. I hope you enjoy it! Comments mean so much, and as usual, follow me on Tumblr if you want! (bettycoopergal)


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